I don't hate a lot of these. They could be part of the good kind of modern (tagged in New Liturgical Movement as the Other Modern), those modern churches from the 1950s for example, obviously built for the old rite. Legitimate liturgical-movement stuff.

What strikes me about Chris Johnson is he perseverates, blogging incessantly about the intricacies of the governance of a church he says he wants nothing more to do with, having left several years ago by his own account. More or less he admits he has trouble letting go. And a lot of what he says is true.

I would characterize the blog as showing a mix of the good the bad and the ugly. There are some perfectly acceptable modern vestments in there along with the clearly horrid and inappropriate. It seems to be more a "vestments I don't like" blog than a true bad vestments blog, though I have to say he dislikes much the same stuff as I do.

Most of my own vestments are fairly modern in design, but reflect traditional practice. One of the things we need to remember is that tradition has to live in order to bring new life to the Church. There is always a danger that being theologically and liturgically traditional tip over into Traditionalism which can almost become as deadly as Modernism.

Nârwen said...
A priest of my acquaintance wrote that while Christians are called to be in the world but not of it, trendy Christians tend to be of the world but not completely in it. I think this post and the comment before this are shining examples of what he meant.

September 10, 2010 11:15 AM

The "comment before this":

Anonymous said...
A church in my neighbourhood put "Jesus is a best friend with benefits" on their readerboard. I called the pastor right away to clue him in on what most people understand that to mean.